Saturday, June 13, 2009

I haven't been posting on here much recently because, honestly, not much has gone on. Dad is still occasionally running a fever that hovers around the 100* mark, but a dose of Tylenol seems to clear that up. Dad was on 5 mg of Ativan today, which is a rather large dosage (in fact, it's the most they are allowed to give him.) This is to pretty much sedate him, although it's not quite doing the job. This is probably due to his body building a tolerance to the drug. Because of this, the medical staff is thinking about switching him off the Ativan and Fentanyl (pain medication) and putting him on another drug that would work both as a sedative and a pain reliever. Again, today Dad was at 100% dependent on the ventilator, but his O2 stats were good at that. His white count was down around the 16,000 mark...I believe 10,000 is deemed normal...but he's been as high as 26,000 so that's a positive sign. One more key thing that the nurse said today was that when she last saw him this past week, they were able to see the hardware in Dad's back through the incision. Now today when neurosurgery came in, they were unable to see the hardware because some tissue had grown over it. This goes to prove that his back is making an attempt to heal now with the aid of the "WoundVac." Once they feel it's ready, they will sew his incision shut and allow the wound to finally close shut and heal completely. The talks about having to remove the hardware were in the past and no longer seem to be a plausible option.